The Winning of the West

by Theodore Roosevelt

34 Carondelet to Alcudia, Sept. 27, 1793.

  35 American State Papers, IV, Seagrove to the Secretary of War, St. Mary’s, June 14, 1792.

  36 Do., Seagrove to the President, Rock Landing, on the Oconee, in Georgia, July 17, 1792.

  37 American State Papers, IV, McGillivray to Seagrove, May 18, 1793.

  38 Do., Secretary of War to Governor Blount, Jan. 31, 1792.

  39 “Knoxville Gazette,’’ Dec. 17, 1791. I use the word “Ten nessee” for convenience; it was not at this time used in this sense.

  40 Robertson MSS., Robertson’s letter, Nashville, Aug. 25, 1791.

  41 State Dept. MSS., Madison Papers, Sevier’s letter, Oct. 30, 1792.

  42 State Dept. MSS., Washington Papers, Secretary of War to the President, July 28, and Aug. 5, 1792.

  43 Shelby MSS., J. Brown to Isaac Shelby, Philadelphia, June 2, 1793.

  44 Do., M. D. Hardin to Isaac Shelby, April 10, 1792, etc., etc.

  45 Do., Letter of Mary Mitchell to Isaac Shelby, May 1, 1793.

  46 Shelby MSS., Arthur Campbell to Shelby, January 6, 1790; letter from Cumberland to Shelby, May 11, 1793; John Logan to Shelby, June 19, 1794; petition of inhabitants of Nelson County, May 9, 1793.

  47 Robertson MSS., Blount to Robertson, April 1, 1792.

  48 Do., Feb. 1, 1792.

  49 American State Papers, IV, Robert Anderson to the Governor of South Carolina, Sept. 20, 1792.

  50 American State Papers, IV, Blount to Secretary of War, Nov. 8, 1792; also page 330, etc. Many of these facts will be found recited not only in the correspondence of Blount, but in the Robertson MSS., in the “Knoxville Gazette,” and in Haywood, Ramsey, and Putnam.

  51 American State Papers, IV, pp. 263, 439, etc.

  52 Robertson’s MSS., Blount to Robertson, May 20, 1792.

  53 “Knoxville Gazette,” March 24, 1792; American State Papers, IV, Blount to Secretary of War, June 2, 1792, with minutes of conference at Coyatee.

  54 “Knoxville Gazette,” June 2, 1792.

  55 American State Papers, IV, Blount to Secretary of War, Sept. 11, 1792.

  56 Robertson MSS., Blount to Robertson, Sept. 6, 1792; Blount to The Bloody Fellow, Sept. 10, 1792; to Robertson, Sept. 12; to The Glass, Sept. 13; to The Bloody Fellow, Sept. 13; to Robertson, Sept. 14; Robertson to Blount, Sept. 26, 1792.

  57 Robertson MSS., Blount to Robertson, Oct. 17, 1792; “Knoxville Gazette,” Oct. 10, and Oct. 20, 1792; Brown’s Narrative, in “Southwestern Monthly.”

  58 Robertson MSS., Blount to Robertson, March 8, 1794. The files of the “Knoxville Gazette” are full of details of these outrages, and so are the letters of Blount to the Secretary of War given in the American State Papers, as well as the letters of Blount and Robertson in the two bound volumes of Robertson MSS. Many of them are quoted in more accessible form in Haywood.

  59 Blount to the Secretary of War, May 5, 1792, and Nov. 10, 1794. As before, 1 use the word “Tennessee” instead of “Southwestern Territory” for convenience; it was not regularly employed until 1796.

  60 American State Papers, IV, p. 364; letter of Secretary of War, May 30, 1793.

  61 Robertson MSS., Blount’s letter. March 8, 1794.

  62 American State Papers, Pickens to Blount, Hopewell, April 28, 1792.

  63 American State Papers, Timothy Barnard to James Sea- grove, March 26, 1793.

  64 American State Papers, IV, pp. 260, 295, 365, 394, 397, 410, 412, 417, 427, 473, etc.; “Knoxville Gazette,” Sept. 26, 1794. For further allusion to Clark’s settlement, see next chapter.

  65 Robertson MSS., Blount to Robertson, Jan. 8, 1793; to Benjamin Logan, Nov. 1, 1794, etc.

  66 “Knoxville Gazette,” Dec. 31, 1791; Nov. 17, 1792; Jan. 25, 1793; Feb. 9, Mar. 23, July 13, Sept. 14, 1793; Nov. 1 and 15, 1794; May 8, 1795.

  67 American State Papers, Seagrove to James Holmes, Feb. 24, 1793; to Mr. Payne, April 14, 1793.

  68 Robertson MSS., Blount to Robertson, Feb. 13, 1793; Blount to James Seagrove, Jan. 9, 1794; Seagrove to Blount, Feb. 10, 1794; Blount to Robertson, March 8, 1794.

  69 “Knoxville Gazette,” Dec. 29; 1792; Dec. 19, 1793.

  70 “Knoxville Gazette,” March 23, 1793.

  71 “Knoxville Gazette,” April 6, 1793.

  72 “Knoxville Gazette,” August 13, 1792.

  73 “Knoxville Gazette,” Feb. 26, 1794, March 27, 1794, etc.

  74 State Department MSS., Washington Papers, War Department, Ex. C, page 19, extract of letter from Blount to Williamson April 14, 1792.

  75 American State Papers, Blount’s letter, March 20, 1793. Scolacutta was usually known to the whites as Hanging Maw. Vol. VIII.—9

  76 Robertson MSS., Smith to Robertson, June 19, 1793, etc.; “Knoxville Gazette,” June 15 and July 13, 1793, etc.

  77 “Knoxville Gazette,” July 13, July 27, 1793, etc., etc.

  78 American State Papers, IV, pp. 459, 460, etc.; “Knoxville Gazette,” Jan, 16 and June 5, 1794.

  79 Robertson MSS., Blount to Robertson, Oct. 29, 1793; “Knoxville Gazette,” Oct. 12 and Nov. 23, 1793.

  80 Robertson MSS., Robertson to Blount, Oct. 8, 1794; Blount to Robertson, Oct. 1, 1794, Sept. 9, 1794 (in which Blount expresses the utmost disapproval of Robertson’s conduct, and says he will not send on Robertson’s original letter to Philadelphia, for fear it will get him into a scrape; and requests him to send a formal report which can be forwarded); “Knoxville Gazette,” Sept. 26, 1794; Brown’s Narrative.

  81 Robertson MSS., Blount’s Minutes of Conference held with Cherokees, Nov. 7 and 8, 1794, at Tellico Block-house.

  82 Robertson MSS., Ecooe to John McKee, Tellico, Feb. 1, 1795, etc.

  83 Blount MSS., James Colbert to Robertson, Feb. 10, 1792.

  84 Robertson MSS., Robertson to Blount, Jan. 13, 1795; Blount to Robertson, Jan. 20, 1795, and April 26, 1795; Robertson to Blount, April 20, 1795; “Knoxville Gazette,” Aug, 25, 1792, Oct. 12, 1793, June 19, 1794, July 17, Aug. 4, and Aug. 15, 1794; American State Papers, pp. 284, 285, etc., etc.

  85 Robertson MSS., Pickering to Blount, March 23, 1795.

  86 Blount MSS., Blount to Smith, June 17, 1793.

  87 Robertson MSS., Blount to gentleman in Cumberland, Philadelphia, Aug. 28, 1793.

  88 “Constitutional History of Tennessee,” by Joshua W. Caldwell, p. 101, another of Robert Clarke’s publications; an admirable study of institutional development in Tennessee.

  CHAPTER II

  INTRIGUES AND LAND SPECULATIONS—THE TREATIES OF JAY AND PINCKNEY, 1793–1797

  THROUGHOUT THE history of the winning of of the West what is noteworthy is the current of tendency rather than the mere succession of individual events. The general movement, and the general spirit behind the movement, became evident in many different forms, and if attention is paid only to some particular manifestation we lose sight of its true import and of its explanation. Particular obstacles retarded or diverted, particular causes accelerated, the current; but the set was always in one direction. The peculiar circumstances of each case must always be taken into account, but it is also necessary to understand that it was but one link in the chain of causation.

  Such events as Burr’s conspiracy or the conquest of Texas can not be properly understood if we fail to remember that they were but the most spectacular or most important manifestations of what occurred many times. The Texans won a striking victory and performed a feat of the utmost importance in our history; and, moreover, it happened that at the moment the accession of Texas was warmly favored by the party of the slave-holders. Burr had been Vice-President of the United States, and was a brilliant and able man, of imposing personality, whose intrigues in the West attracted an attention altogether disproportionate to their real weight. In consequence each event is often treated as if it were isolated and stood apart from the general current of Western history; whereas in truth each was but the most striking or important among a host of others. The feats performed by Austin and Houston and the other founders of the Texan Republic were identical in
kind with the feats merely attempted, or but partially performed, by the men who, like Morgan, Elijah Clark, and George Rogers Clark, at different times either sought to found colonies in the Spanish-speaking lands under Spanish authority, on else strove to conquer these lands outright by force of arms. Boone settled in Missouri when it was still under the Spanish Government, and himself accepted a Spanish commission. Whether Missouri had or had not been ceded first by Spain to France and then by France to the United States early in the present century, really would not have altered its final destiny, so far at least as concerns the fact that it would ultimately have been independent of both France and Spain, and would have been dominated by an English-speaking people; for when once the backwoodsmen, of whom Boone was the forerunner, became sufficiently numerous in the land they were certain to throw off the yoke of the foreigner; and the fact that they had voluntarily entered the land and put themselves under this yoke would have made no more difference to them than it afterward made to the Texans. So it was with Aaron Burr. His conspiracy was merely one, and by no means the most dangerous, of the various conspiracies in which men like Wilkinson, Sebastian, and many of the members of the early Democratic societies in Kentucky, bore a part. It was rendered possible only by the temper of the people and by the peculiar circumstances which also rendered the earlier conspiracies possible; and it came to naught for the same reasons that they came to naught, and was even more hopeless, because it was undertaken later, when the conditions were less favorable.

  The movement deliberately entered into by many of the Kentuckians in the years 1793 and 1794, to conquer Louisiana on behalf of France, must be treated in this way. The leader in this movement was George Rogers Clark. His chance of success arose from the fact that there were on the frontier many men of restless, adventurous, warlike type, who felt a spirit of unruly defiance toward the home government, and who greedily eyed the rich Spanish lands. Whether they got the lands by conquest or by colonization, and whether they warred under one flag or another, was to them a matter of little moment. Clark’s career is of itself sufficient to prove the truth of this. He had already been at the head of a movement to make war against the Spaniards, in defiance of the Central Government, on behalf of the Western settlements. On another occasion he had offered his sword to the Spanish Government, and had requested permission to found in Spanish territory a State, which should be tributary to Spain and a barrier against the American advance. He had thus already sought to lead the Westerners against Spain in a warfare undertaken purely by themselves and for their own objects, and had also offered to form by the help of some of these Westerners a State which should be a constituent portion of the Spanish dominion. He now readily undertook the task of raising an army of Westerners to overrun Louisiana in the interests of the French Republic. The conditions which rendered possible these various movements were substantially the same, although the immediate causes, or occasions, were different. In any event the result would ultimately have been the conquest of the Spanish dominions by the armed frontiersmen, and the upbuilding of English-speaking States on Spanish territory.

  The expedition which at the moment Clark proposed to head took its peculiar shape from outside causes. At this period Genet was in the midst of his preposterous career as Minister from the French Republic to the United States. The various bodies of men who afterward coalesced into the Democratic-Republican party were frantically in favor of the French Revolution, regarding it with a fatuous admiration quite as foolish as the horror with which it affected most of the Federalists. They were already looking to Jefferson as their leader, and Jefferson, though at the time Secretary of State under Washington, was secretly encouraging them, and was playing a very discreditable part toward his chief. The ultra-admirers of the French Revolution not only lost their own heads, but turned Genet’s as well, and persuaded him that the people were with him and were ready to oppose Washington and the Central Government in the interests of revolutionary France. Genet wished to embroil America with England, and sought to fit out American privateers on the seacoast towns to prey on the English commerce, and to organize on the Ohio River an armed expedition to conquer Louisiana, as Spain was then an ally of England and at war with France. All over the country Genet’s admirers formed Democratic societies on the model of the Jacobin Clubs of France. They were of course either useless or noxious in such a country and under such a government as that of the United States, and exercised a very mischievous effect. Kentucky was already under the influence of the same forces that were at work in Virginia and elsewhere, and the class of her people who were politically dominant were saturated with the ideas of those doctrinaire politicians of whom Jefferson was chief. These Jeffersonian doctrinaires were men who at certain crises, in certain countries, might have rendered great service to the cause of liberty and humanity; but their influence in America was on the whole distinctly evil, save that, by a series of accidents, they became the especial champions of the westward extension of the nation, and in consequence were identified with a movement which was all-essential to the national well-being.

  Kentucky was ripe for Genet’s intrigues, and he found the available leader for the movement in the person of George Rogers Clark. Clark was deeply imbittered, not only with the United States Government but with Virginia, for the Virginia Assembly had refused to pay any of the debts he had contracted on account of the State, and had not even reimbursed him for what he had spent.1 He had a right to feel aggrieved at the State’s penuriousness and her indifference to her moral obligations; and just at the time when he was most angered came the news that Genet was agitating throughout the United States for a war with England, in open defiance of Washington, and that among his plans he included a Western movement against Louisiana. Clark at once wrote to him expressing intense sympathy with the French objects and offering to undertake an expedition for the conquest of St. Louis and upper Louisiana if he was provided with the means to obtain provisions and stores. Clark further informed Genet that his country had been utterly ungrateful to him, and that as soon as he received Genet’s approbation of what he proposed to do he would get himself “expatriated.” He asked for commissions for officers, and stated his belief that the Creoles would rise, that the adventurous Westerners would gladly throng to the contest, and that the army would soon be at the gates of New Orleans.2

  Genet immediately commissioned Clark as a Major-General in the service of the French Republic, and sent out various Frenchmen—Michaux, La Chaise, and others—with civil and military titles, to co-operate with him, to fit out his force as well as possible, and to promise him pay for his expenses. Brown, now one of Kentucky’s representatives at Philadelphia, gave these men letters of introduction to merchants in Lexington and elsewhere, from whom they got some supplies; but they found they would have to get most from Philadelphia.3 Michaux was the agent for the French Minister, though nominally his visit was undertaken on purely scientific grounds. Jefferson’s course in the matter was characteristic. Openly, he was endeavoring in a perfunctory manner to carry out Washington’s policy of strict neutrality in the contest between France and England, but secretly he was engaged in tortuous intrigues against Washington and was thwarting his wishes, so far as he dared, in regard to Genet. It is impossible that he could have been really misled as to Michaux’s character and the object of his visits; nevertheless, he actually gave him a letter of introduction to the Kentucky Governor, Isaac Shelby.4 Shelby had shown himself a gallant and capable officer in warfare against both the Indians and the tories, but he possessed no marked political ability, and was entirely lacking in the strength of character which would have fitted him to put a stop to rebellion and lawlessness. He hated England, sympathized with France, and did not possess sufficient political good sense to appreciate either the benefits of the Central Government or the need of preserving order.

  Clark at once proceeded to raise what troops he could, and issued a proclamation signed by himself as Major-General of the Armies of France,
Commander-in-Chief of the French Revolutionary Legions on the Mississippi. He announced that he proposed to raise volunteers for the reduction of the Spanish posts on the Mississippi and to open the trade of that river, and promised all who would join him from one to three thousand acres of any unappropriated land in the conquered regions, the officers to receive proportionately more. All lawful plunder was to be equally divided according to the customs of war.5 The proclamation thus frankly put the revolutionary legions on the footing of a gang of freebooters. Each man was to receive a commission proportioned in grade to the number of soldiers he brought to Clark’s band. In short, it was a piece of sheer filibustering, not differing materially from one of Walker’s filibustering attempts in Central America sixty years later, save that at this time Clark had utterly lost his splendid vigor of body and mind and was unfit for the task he had set himself. At first, however, he met with promises of support from various Kentuckians of prominence, including Benjamin Logan.6 His agents gathered flat-boats and pirogues for the troops and laid in stores of powder, lead, and beef. The nature of some of the provisions shows what a characteristic backwoods expedition it was; for Clark’s agent notified him that he had ready “upward of eleven hundred weight of Bear Meat and about seventy or seventy-four pair of Veneson Hams.”7

  The Democratic Societies in Kentucky entered into Clark’s plans with the utmost enthusiasm, and issued manifestoes against the Central Government which were, in style, of hysterical violence, and, in matter, treasonable. The preparations were made openly, and speedily attracted the attention of the Spanish agents, besides giving alarm to the representatives of the Federal Government and to all sober citizens who had sense enough to see that the proposed expedition was merely another step toward anarchy. St. Clair, the Governor of the Northwestern Territory, wrote to Shelby to warn him of what was being done, and Wayne, who was a much more formidable person than Shelby or Clark or any of their backers, took prompt steps to prevent the expedition from starting, by building a fort near the mouth of the Ohio, and ordering his lieutenants to hold themselves in readiness for any action he might direct. At the same time the Administration wrote to Shelby telling him what was on foot, and requesting him to see that no expedition of the kind was allowed to march against the domains of a friendly power. Shelby, in response, entered into a long argument to show that he could not interfere with the expedition, and that he doubted his constitutional power to do anything in the matter; his reasons being of the familiar kind usually advanced in such cases, where a government officer, from timidity or any other cause, refuses to do his duty. If his contention as to his own powers and the powers of the General Government had been sound, it would logically have followed that there was no power anywhere to back up the law. Innes, the Federal Judge, showed himself equally lukewarm in obeying the Federal authorities.8